Re: [-empyre-] Day 1 #2: Feminism Confronts Audio Tech - Gendered rhetoric

[Andra McCartney]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
On 2014-06-26, at 2:59 PM, Lyn Goeringer wrote:

> we are in a semi-fortunate age when even that is starting to happen in 
> community and makers centers and no longer reliant entirely on higher 
> education and tech schools to learn basic electronics. 

I think this is a very important point raised by Lyn. I led a study in Canada 
of women working in sound technologies (music, film soundtracks, theatre and 
museum sound, documentary production etc). In Canada, community and campus 
radio stations and artist-run centres have been founded across the country 
since the 70s. We found that 40% of the participants in the study had got their 
start working with sound technologies in community and campus radio stations, 
and many accessed equipment and technical support -- as well as solidarity -- 
from community artist-run centres as well. 

Thanks for this stimulating discussion.
Andra McCartney



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Re: [-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening

[Andra McCartney]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks for these questions. I am fascinated by how people listen to sound
art, and find that others' listening experiences expand my understanding of
sound art works. Each time I have engaged listeners in conversation about
sound art, whether through handwritten, online, performed or oral forms,
and whether immediately or over a longer time period, there are surprises.
People listen in ways that continue to surprise me and that then lead to
re-consideration of the sound art in question, as well as other areas of
thinking. These encounters seem very precious and important.


On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Jim Drobnick  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> For today, Thursday, 19th, our focus will be on "Hearing and Listening."
> While these topics may have been addressed in the past through perceptual
> or phenomenological  methods, the questions by Jennifer Fisher, Eldritch
> Priest and Salomé Voegelin hint at the affective, bodily and political
> forces implicitly at work during this activity. Too often it is assumed
> that hearing or listening merely involves a passive transfer of sensory
> data, as if the ear were merely a conduit for information. But it's clear
> that the ear is subject to socialization and bias, training and discipline,
> personal idiosyncracies, and influence by the surrounding environment. The
> 3 questions today, then, seek to reflect upon the effects of such
> influences when attending to audio art:
>
> *1) Jennifer Fisher*: What is the significance of spatial resonance and
> affect when listening to sound art? How do hearing and proprioception
> combine in formations of resonance?  How might the resonances of ambient
> space -- whether a museum, concert hall or other venue -- operate
> contextually in curating sound art? My sense is that resonance operates
> somewhat differently from vibration: if vibration stems from the tactile
> sensing of a discrete object (or its emission from a particular point in
> space), might resonance afford more delocalized, contextual,
> intensification of hearing and proprioception?
>
> *2) Eldritch Priest*: Through tropes such as the often cited “the ears
> are never closed,” artists and theorists alike routinely posit audition as
> form of “exposure,” a veritable faculty that lays us open and vulnerable to
> the world. But as Steven Connor notes, the ear is not submissive; it
> "actively connives to make what it takes to be sense out of what it hears.”
> This means that the ear not only refuses to entertain an outside -- “noise”
> -- but its operations seem to entail "a kind of deterrence of sound” such
> that to hear is always to mishear. But if all hearing is mishearing,
> audition can only be a fundamental hallucination that works for the powers
> of the false. From this premise we might ask whether hearing is (in both
> its ordinary and Peircean sense of the term) an abduction of the “outside.”
> What would it mean or do, then, for sound studies—specifically sound
> studies in its humanistic phase -- that its organ of concern (l’oreille) is
> steeped primarily in “guesswork”? Does studying sound mean studying what is
> effectively a connivance? And if so, if audition is always making sense up,
> then with what, or as Neitzsche would say, with “whom” is it complicit?
>
> *3) Salomé Voegelin*: What is the relationship between listening and
> sound art?
>
> Jennifer, Eldritch and Salomé, please feel free to further elaborate or
> extend your initial thoughts!
>
> Best,
>
> Jim
>
>
>
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>



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Re: [-empyre-] start of week 3

[Andra McCartney]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--It is interesting that what I suggested as a theoretical possibility was
something that Anna experienced in a show. I do think that this
conversational approach is important since it shifts attention from the
conventional art star territorial approach to sound, where perhaps big
names get big rooms and smaller names are given headphones on the wall, to
an approach where everyone needs to think about interaction and cooperation.


On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 5:20 PM, Anna Friz  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello everyone, and thanks to Jim for inviting me to join this stellar
> group of discussants for this week.
>
>
> One strategy for curating multiple sound works is to present them in
> conversation with one another, quite physically, rather than trying to
> maintain their status as totally discrete pieces. I had a very fruitful
> experience last year doing a show in Chicago with the duo Coppice, where we
> each installed an audio work at the art and media space TriTriangle, with
> the idea that the pieces would function as a kind of ecosystem. My work was
> a multi-channel transmission piece using suspended radio receivers and
> transmitters, while Coppice's piece used small speakers attached to the
> walls near the floor. The works literally and figuratively overlapped,
> occupying different strata in the space. It was especially interesting to
> experience each work in the context of the other; how they were reframed by
> this meeting, which sounds were clearly of one or the other work, which
> sounds were composite or could belong to either. Obviously this sort of
> solution is not appropriate to every situation, but I see much potential
> for this approach both practically and theoretically.
>
>   all the best,
>
> Anna
>
>
> Anna Friz
> radio * art * sound * research
> Wavefarm/free103point9.org  transmission artist
> steering member, Skálar Centre for Sound Art and Experimental Music
> nicelittlestatic.com
>
>
>
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> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



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Re: [-empyre-] start of week 3

[Andra McCartney]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--hi Jim and others,

I wanted to comment on this:
" At a recent conference in London, I heard David Toop suggest that curating a 
group sound art exhibition was "impossible" given the inevitable sonic conflict 
between the exhibited works. Such a claim, on its face, seems rather 
provocative. What are some strategies that curators or artists might employ to 
overcome the obvious challenges Toop is alluding to?"

My friend Diane Leboeuf does sound installations for museums that involve doing 
separate installations for different parts of the exhibit, and making them fit 
together sonically. This is perhaps easier for her to do because as the sole 
maker, she can avoid conflict between the different parts of the exhibits. When 
different people are making pieces, it is more of a challenge. But what would 
happen if a curator approached a number of sound artists and asked them to make 
works that would NOT conflict with each other, that would collaborate sonically 
in creating an integrated exhibition, with elements by different people, but 
where the people would attempt to make the works fit together, by choosing 
different frequency ranges, sound placement and timbral characters? It would 
certainly be a different approach to sound ecology, to ask the makers to work 
in concert rather than in conflict?
Andra

On 2014-06-16, at 9:28 AM, Jim Drobnick wrote:

>  At a recent conference in London, I heard David Toop suggest that curating a 
> group sound art exhibition was "impossible" given the inevitable sonic 
> conflict between the exhibited works. Such a claim, on its face, seems rather 
> provocative. What are some strategies that curators or artists might employ 
> to overcome the obvious challenges Toop is alluding to?

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